Patricia Karvelas reports: In the hotly contested seat of Melbourne, the Greens are giving people they identify as Liberal voters a leaflet in blue - no trace of green - asking them to preference Adam Bandt.

Kevin Rudd was still campaigning hard this morning via email, with this message sent out earlier today:

Today is Election Day, a day when Australians across the country can choose between two very different futures.

This has been a hard fought campaign, but today it comes back to something very simple: will we elect a Labor government who will invest in a brighter future for our country and protect jobs, or will we have a Liberal government committed to cuts that will hurt jobs, hurt our economy and hurt the future of Australia?

Today, I ask you to do two things. Firstly, please vote for your local Labor candidate. Second, please share this Election Day message with five friends:

The choice today

by australianlabor on 9:02 AM

Until later, thank you so very much for your support in this campaign.

While the Liberals are on cruise control all over the country, in the Liberal-held seat of Indi they are doing everything to avoid using the image of their increasingly unpopular candidate, Sophie Mirabella.Instead, they are mounting a scare campaign using the images of Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott to promote an anti-Independent sentiment.

It's just over two and a half hours to go until the polls close on the east coast. The weather around the nation is mostly fine and as Australians turn out to vote the air is thick with the smell of polling-booth sausage sizzles. Indeed, Twitter reports that today Australia has generated the greatest use of the word 'sausage' in 2013.Tony Abbott voted early this morning with wife Margie and their daughters on Sydney's northern beaches. He then undertook a barnstorming tour of marginal Labor seats in Sydney as he pressed his case for election, imploring voters to snub independents and minor parties in favour of a "strong majority government".Kevin Rudd hit the airwaves first, opting instead for a virtual campaign that involved television interviews and a “telephone town hall” promoted on social media, in which he took calls from around the nation.Rudd then voted much later in the day, just after 1pm, with wife Therese at their church in east Brisbane. Both leaders were dogged by protesters.

Voting at Liberal-held Pymble today, The Australian's Mary-Ellen Hepworth spotted that someone had written "Tony Abbott" on the wall of the booth she was in. She pointed this out to the woman supervising the ballot boxes as possible illegal advertising, or certainly irregular, but "wasn't sure they were too interested".

It's a serious job, being a bellwether. Mike Kelly, the Labor MP for Eden-Monaro, stands sentinel today in his electorate, which has a record of always going to the party that ends up in government. Picture: Ray Strange

Labor's star candidate in WA, Alannah MacTiernan, has cast her vote at Highgate Primary School in the heart of the seat of Perth, which is held by defence minister Stephen Smith, who is retiring.Ms MacTiernan is tipped to increase Labor's margin in the seat, one of just three held by Labor in WA.“Win or lose, I think it is absolutely important for good government that you also need a strong opposition," she said.

Newspoll exit polls just released on Sky show the Coalition ending up with 97 seats, a gain of 25, Labor on 51 with a drop of 21. Independents finishing on 2 (a drop of 3) and the Greens losing their sole seat of Melbourne.It's a rout in the eastern states, with the polls showing the LNP picking up 7 in Kevin Rudd's home state of Queensland, 14 in NSW and 3 in Victoria. More from Dennis Shanahan shortly.

At 4.39pm on Sky, well before the polls have even closed, former Liberal powerbroker Michael Kroger has called the election as a landslide for Tony Abbott. "The show is well and truly over," he says. Fellow panellist and Labor stalwart Graham Richardson agrees: "I think we all called this months ago."

Here's all the latest on the Sophie Mirabella poster wars we reported on earlier. A source tells us that Greg Mirabella personally put up enormous signage at the booth in Indi at 8pm last night. The signs completely obstructed the windows to the voting booth and the message could be read inside the building.

The officer in charge of the booth early this morning instructed Mr and Mrs Mirabella to personally remove the non-compliant signage. There was apparently a similar incident last night in Wodonga where the principal and head of PTA of a school which was to be a booth called the police regarding the large group of Liberals covering the school in signage and drinking in public.

There were a number of incidents throughout the day involving aggressive Liberal supporters (who have been bussed in from as far as Sydney and Canberra) videoing opposing party volunteers and photographing their number plates. There was also an incident in which a Liberal volunteer instructed voters to only number one box if they wished to vote for Cathy McGowan - thereby encouraging informal voting.

Kevin Rudd is 50-50 with Liberal challenger Bill Glasson in Griffith, the Sky news exit poll suggests. With the Newspoll showing that Labor would lose seven seats in Queensland we thought Rudd might be the last ALP man left standing in his home state - but it's even too close to call in his Brisbane electorate. The poll shows a 7.1 per cent primary swing away from the PM and a 9.2 per cent swing to Glasson, with the Greens losing 5 per cent. The figures suggest a 45 per cent primary vote for the former AMA president and a two-party-preferred of 50-50... and that's as close as it gets, folks.

LNP Senator George Brandis reckons Rudd is gone in Griffith. A Sky News/Newspoll has Rudd and challenger Bill Glasson neck-and-neck in the seat. Brandis says on those results, Glasson has won, as pre-poll votes heavily favor the LNP in that seat.

CHRISTIAN KERR reports:A CLEAR majority of voters do not want to race back to the polls if an unfriendly Senate blocks the repeal of the carbon tax, Newspoll has found.With Newspoll’s exit polling pointing to a solid Coalition win, the make-up of the Senate will be harder to predict.The result could take days or weeks to be settled, particularly given that postal votes will be received by the Australian Electoral Commission up to September 20.Fifty-two per cent of those surveyed by Newspoll did not want a Coalition government to proceed with a double dissolution if the Senate blocks its plan to repeal the carbon tax, with just 39 per cent backing the plan.Newspoll chief Martin O'Shannessy told Sky News Australia voters were tired of elections.However, there may be no rush to a double dissolution by an Abbott government.Tony Abbott, if he wins tonight, may decide to wait until after the new Senate takes its place after July 1 next year before moving to repeal the tax, depending on its make-up.There are also constitutional requirements that must be satisfied before Mr Abbott could request a double dissolution.

Peak hour at Pembrooke Hall polling station near Port Macquarie in the seat of Lyne, being vacated by independent Rob Oakeshott. Border collie Anya and cattle dog Bonnie wait for their owner to cast their vote. Picture: Nathan Edwards

Rudd supporters remain defiant in the face of defeat. One says Labor looks like losing 20 seats but it would have been worse under Julia Gillard. "I always thought 20 seats but hoped for 10. Would have been 40 under JG and could have been 10 if her people had moved aside in March."

MICHAEL McKENNA reports from Queensland: Wayne Swan is home from a day at the booths, and getting ready to spend election night at Banyo Rugby League Club. While it is likely to be his swansong with supporters, as exit polls show he will be among the casualties of a Coalition victory, the former treasurer is unwilling to offer a view on whether he will hold his seat of Lilley, in Brisbane’s north. Swan holds the seat with a margin of just 3.2 per cent, after taking a walloping in 2010 with a 10.4 per cent swing against him and barely surviving on the back of Greens preferences.After keeping a low profile during the campaign, Swan says: “It was always going to be close’’ in Lilley. Asked if there was a palatable swing against Labor outside the booths, Swan – who lost his seat in 1996 after just one term, before winning it back in 1998 – says it feels like any other election day. “I enjoyed being out in the booths, it felt like most of the elections I have been in, they have all been hotly contested,’’ he says.